Things from the Past by Steven Deighan

Things From the Past is the second collection of short stories from promising Edinburgh horror writer Steven Deighan, following on from last years debut, A Dead Calmness. Deighan brings us back into his Stephen King inspired world of trash horror with four short tales about loners and their troubles, all punctured by crazy twists and demonic apparitions. The Last Drive is the tale of a young lad who falls out with his parents and runs away from home, ending up in a seedy B&B. He meets a girl, and between them they concoct a plan to rob a petrol station and make a bid for freedom, but their plan soon turns into a nightmare. All the Deaf See is Music follows on with similar characters, set in a run down industrial town where a young college kid starts hearing voices which lead him into a supreme battle between good and evil. It's all very pulp fiction, mundane but with a heavy twist of Tales of the Unexpected, so this should find a tried and tested audience.
The question is, though, whether these tales are really developed enough, even for this genre. They come across as immature, the work of a teenager - and they are. Deighan wrote these tales around the time when he left school, and they seem noticeably puerile with the added problems of too many adjectives and jarring vocabulary. The book has its charm, but not enough to gloss over the adolescent fantasies and clunky style. Given that Deighan is just beginning in this field, the decision to release old work after his well received debut is baffling. But, as he tells us as he modestly prefaces the book, it is hard to craft the perfect story. [Fraser Cardow]